Despite excellent parts, Picnic in the Cemetery feels it should be better than it actually is. Moreover, as an audience member, I feel like I should have liked it better than I did. It’s a show where all the excellent smothers what’s actually good.

When the lights darken, and the musicians take their place, it really looks like an experience waiting to happen. Erik Kuong Wa Fun’s projections and Fung Kwok Kee Gabriel’s set and lighting design are things of beauty. There’s a moment, early on, where Kie walks onstage with a flashlight. As he runs it over items on the stage the project becomes a limited image, like its caught in the beam of the same light Kie holds in his hand.

Even the music is gorgeous, a series of classical compositions done one after another.

All of this sounds like the makings of a great night, right? If you asked me to describe what I saw onstage, however, what comes to mind is ‘creative mess.’

Oh there’s something there, alright. There is a beautiful set that quickly becomes a sightline problem for one side of the audience. Ian’s performances, almost entirely delegated to the other side of the stage, might as well have not been in the show for the most part because I couldn’t always tell what she was doing from where I sat.

And, it sounds terrible, but I wasn’t entirely sure if having a performer really added much to the show. There’s a sense to Picnic that everything was thrown at the wall, and by some quirk it all stuck so they kept it in.

Yes, I thought the projections were beautiful but the small films seemed to add nothing to the pieces they accompanied. Props around the stage were interacted with but it never seemed to actually serve a purpose considering how slight those actions were.

I mean, sometimes Kie would get up and play with a teddy bear or a doll on a ladder, but it was between one breath and the next, like he just needed to get up from the piano for a moment. Kie is charming, don’t get me wrong, and I liked that he was being playful but I couldn’t help but wonder why?

Why have video when you have a live performer? Why have the audience come sit on the stage? Why move them back to their seats half-way through the show? Why have props if you barely use them?

And the worse part of it all is that the music is so good (“Pulsating” and “Night Waltz” were two personal favourites) but in the actual context of the show, everything felt so slow. Obviously, I didn’t really like it but I also don’t necessarily want to say it’s bad because it’s not— it’s just lost in its mess of creativity.

Kie makes the point in his creator’s note that “the production constantly evolves to involve new collaborators, new venues and new audiences.” If this is one version of this production of Picnic in the Cemetery then I’d rather consider it a first draft with something a little more cohesive to come.